What is wi fi multimedia

What Is WMM (Wi-Fi Multimedia), And Should I Enable It On My Router?

Problems when streaming video or other types of multimedia can be one of the most annoying things that can happen when surfing the web.

While there are many reasons why your network could have problems when streaming videos, many wireless routers have a simple fix that may well help solve the problem. This is the WMM setting on your router.

Now, you may have seen the WMM option on your router but known exactly what it is. This article aims to help you answer the question what is WMM as well as helping you decide if you should use it or not.

What is WMM (Wi-Fi Multimedia)?

WMM stands for Wi-Fi Multimedia. It is an automated way of handling Quality of Service (QoS) on your Wi-Fi network that in theory should allow your router to provide improved video and voice performance over your network.

Normally when you use a wireless router all traffic is given the same priority. This means different devices and applications have the same opportunity to transfer packets of data. This is ok for normal web traffic, however, it can cause problems for uses that are sensitive to things such as latency increases and throughput reductions.

Routers with the WMM function are able to prioritize certain types of multimedia traffic when traveling across your network. By giving these applications access to the required network resources over other types of traffic, performance on the prioritized applications is increased.

This can give you better network performance when you are doing things like streaming SD or HD video content or when using a VoIP call service.

There are four categories that WMM uses to categorize your traffic. These are:

• WMM Voice Priority
• WMM Video Priority
• WMM Best Effort Priority
• WMM Background Priority

This list is in order of the priority given to each service, so voice applications are given the highest priority, followed by video, best effort and then background applications.

By prioritizing certain types of multimedia traffic, in situations where there is a lot of network congestion the prioritized traffic is less likely to ‘drop’ which means you are less likely to have problems with that type of media. This can help you when watching videos or making voice calls.

Should I enable or disable WMM on my router?

This obviously depends on your specific situation. If you never usually have any problems buffering video or with voice calls then you should just carry on as usual.

If you are having these problems then it is certainly worth enabling WMM if your router has it as an option and seeing if it has any effect on the problem. If it does, then great!

It is worth noting that WMM is certainly not guaranteed to fix all of your streaming problems as your network can have problems due to a number of different reasons. These can include:

• Slow internet
• Poor connections between your router and client
• High packet loss

As well as this, the fact that WMM prioritizes certain types of data transfers over others means that while you’re streaming and VoIP may improve if you turn this setting on you may see a decrease in the performance of your other internet use.

For example, downloads could slow down and general internet use could become a bit slower. Because of this, you should check if anyone else is using your network when you turn it on.

An alternative option is to use a wireless router installed with DD-WRT. DD-WRT allows you to see what is taking up bandwidth on your network and adjust your network accordingly.

For example, if you are having trouble streaming a video, DD-WRT can tell you that a download on another computer is taking up a lot of network bandwidth. You can then pause the download, which will free up a lot bandwidth and could solve the problems with your video stream.

Conclusion

To conclude WMM is certainly worth turning on if you are having problems streaming video or making VoIP calls. By prioritizing certain traffic your connections can be improved and it can potentially solve your problems.

Of course, there is more than one reason for video buffering problems so there is a chance that WMM will not solve your problem.

WMM Support

It is also worth mentioning that both your client and source application need to support WMM for it to work properly. You can be sure your products will support WMM if they are Wi-Fi Alliance certified for WMM .

Hopefully, you have found this useful but if you have any questions please leave a comment below. Alternatively, share this article if you know someone who is likely to find it useful.

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Wi-Fi Multimedia

Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM) is a subset of the IEEE 802.11e standard for wireless LAN applications. It is used to define and optimize Wi-Fi signal quality and performance by prioritizing Wi-Fi network traffic when multiple concurrent applications compete for network resources. WMM does not guarantee throughput.

WMM is also known as Wireless Multimedia Extension (WME).

Techopedia Explains Wi-Fi Multimedia

Wi-Fi traffic access is prioritized according to the following categories from highest to lowest:

Voice: Uses Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), lowest latency and highest quality
Video: Supports standard and high-definition television (SDTV/HDTV) signals via a wireless local area network (WLAN)
Best effort: Data packets from devices and applications that lack quality of service (QoS) standards
Background: File downloads, printing and other signals not degraded by latency
The Wi-Fi Alliance – a trade association that promotes WLAN technology and oversees interoperability performance standards – added the Power Save certification to WMM to fine-tune the power consumption of critical applications used by mobile phones and other battery-driven devices. Power Save triggers the release of queued buffered data at regular intervals from the access point, or WLAN signal transmission point, such as a wireless router, which conserves power and allows continuous data transmission on Wi-Fi devices in low-power states.

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Настройка оборудования

Блог о модемах, роутерах и GPON терминалах Ростелеком

Режим Wi-Fi Multimedia WMM — что это такое

Для того, чтобы обеспечить клиентам беспроводных сетей определённый уровень качества обслуживания QOS был создан специальный стандарт Wi-Fi Multimedia — WMM. У некоторых производителей сетевого оборудования он называется несколько иначе — Wi-Fi Multimedia Extensions, WME. Тем не менее, большинство современных устройств с модулями беспроводной связи (PCI/USB-адаптеры, беспроводные маршрутизаторы, смартфоны, планшеты и т.п.) поддерживают этот стандарт и проблем совместимости обычно не возникает.
За основу взят стандарт IEEE 802.11e, благодаря чему обеспечены основные возможности QOS для WiFi. На текущий момент WMM определяет четыре класса обслуживания трафика беспроводной сети:

- голос, высокий приоритет - видео (уникаст и мультикаст) - обычный, best-effort - фоновый, самый низкий приоритет

К сожалению, на обычных роутерах и точках доступа режим WMM не даёт сделать настройку приоритизации в абсолютном режиме, но хотя бы даёт возможность правильно обрабатывать трафик, передавая приоритетные голос и видео быстрее и с меньшими задержками для доступа.
Более того, активный режим WMM — это обязательно условие если Вы хотите выжать максимум из своей беспроводной сети. В противном случае, даже на стандарте 802.11ac более чем 54 Мегабит/сек. выжать не получится.

Плюсы:
+ поддерживается практически всеми производителями сетевого оборудования;
+ работает как для голосового трафика и видео-контента;
+ эффективно работает;
+ позволяет добиться увеличить время автономной работы телефонов и планшетов до 30%;

Минусы:
— нет поддержки в старых продуктах;
— не обеспечивает стопроцентной приоритизации голоса и видео.

Режим Wi-Fi Multimedia имеет несколько дополнительных расширений, опции для включение/выключение которых можно встретить, например, на роутерах ASUS.

— WMM APDS — даёт возможность управления электропитанием для мобильных устройств, являющихся клиентами беспроводных клиентов с целью увеличения времени их автономной работы. Яркий пример — смарфтоны iPhone и iPad. Главное условие — чтобы ноутбук и телефон тоже поддерживали APSD, иначе этот функционал будет больше вредить, нежели будет полезным и его придётся выключить.
— WMM DLS — обеспечение контроля качества в беспроводной сети между двумя устройствами в режиме «Инфраструктура».

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WMM or Wi-Fi Multimedia: How to Activate it on the Router

Wireless networks today have gained a lot of weight compared to cable. In recent years there has been an increase in the number of devices that connect to the network without using cable, and this is also due to the improvement of this type of network. There are many standards behind all this and they serve to use the different services and tools available. In this article we are going to talk about what is WMM or Wi-Fi Multimedia .

What is WMM or Wi-Fi Multimedia

WMM stands for Wi-Fi Multimedia. It is certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance and is based on the IEEE 802.11e standard. It is present in what is known as 802.11 N or also known as WiFi 4. It came with the aim of improving previous wireless standards, thus providing better speed and greater stability.

It is responsible for providing basic quality of service (QoS) characteristics to these types of networks. The goal is to deliver great network performance. WMM allows to prioritize traffic through four different AC categories, such as AC_VO (voice), AC_VI (video), AC_BE and AC_BK.

This is very useful to use certain applications that will need a good connection to emit voice and sound. For example, we are talking about VoIP messaging programs or those that serve to make video calls. We already know that this is something that is increasingly present in our day to day, so we must make sure to use a router capable of offering the best performance.

If our router does not have WMM or it is not activated, we could have speed and stability problems that would affect the use of these types of programs that we mentioned. This could slow down the connection and cause continuous outages, especially when our network is saturated or we have a limited connection.

Energy saving certification

It should also be noted that WMM or Wi-Fi Multimedia achieved certification by the Wi-Fi Alliance with energy saving. This is known as Power Save and it uses 802.11e mechanisms to save power.

This is very important for battery-powered equipment . For example we can think of a laptop or a mobile device. Wireless connections can weigh on autonomy and considerably reduce the time in which they will work without having to charge them again.

Thanks to this standard we will also be able to save energy and extend the time available for a device without the need for charging. This certification will indicate that this product is specially designed to save energy when we connect to Wi-Fi.

Have WMM enabled on the router

Modern routers are certified with WiFi N. This means that by default it is normal for them to bring this function enabled. It is important that it is like this, since otherwise we will have a worse performance that can affect the devices that we connect and certain applications.

In this article we run tests with different routers to check the sync and file transfer speed . It should be noted that if this function is not enabled, the synchronization will be limited to 54 Mbps. We could not take advantage of the speed beyond that limit.

In testing we used a TP-LINK TL-WN821N . In this case, with the WMM function enabled, the sync speed reached 300 Mbps and the file transfer exceeded 6 MB / s. On the other hand, that same router without this function enabled did not exceed a synchronization of 54 Mbps, in addition to 1 MB / s of file transfer, with unstable uploads and downloads.

Something similar happened with the Intel 4965AGN adapter. With the WMM function activated it achieved a synchronization of 130 Mbps and a file transfer of 10.2 MB / s, while without having this feature activated it was limited to a file transfer of 2.5 MB / s, although stable without ups and downs.

With an Intel 5100AGN Wi-Fi adapter we could also see a considerable reduction. In this case, it goes from 150 Mbps synchronization and 13 MB / s file transfer to 54 Mbps and 1 MB / s, respectively.

To activate the WMM function we will have to access the router. Of course, as we have indicated, it is normal that it is already enabled, unless we have changed the configuration of the device. To do this we have to enter through 192.168.1.1 (or the corresponding gateway), go to Advanced Options (may vary depending on the model), Wi-Fi / Wireless and there search for the WMM function.

In case we see that it is not enabled, we must activate it. Otherwise, as we have seen in the article, we will have a considerable limitation and we will not achieve good performance when browsing the Internet and especially connecting our devices.

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